"Baric: So before, I think what you need to think about is that no one had the sequence. So if you don't have the sequence of the pathogen, you don't have any guide to how to synthesize it or make it."
Clearly this is a non-answer to the question, since if Baric made SARS-2 he would already be the source of the genome. Was the committee so dumb they couldn't pick this up? Apparently so. Why didn't they insist on a simple yes/no answer?
Since Baric avoided answering the question "Did you make a virus similar to SARS-2 before the outbreak?" it is strongly implied that he did.
Agreed, good catch, Baric is slippery. Based on his own 2018 DARPA Defuse notes, he had a genome 20% different from SARS1 and SARS2 is 20% different. But he lied about that and claimed SARS2 was 22% different.
Actually I'm being naive here. The committee just let Baric's bullshit answer slide and moved on. They've asked the important question and got an answer. Job done. If Baric hadn't created the virus he could have easily said no. The fact that he did not basically proves that he did. You are way ahead of the lab leakers on this issue.
I made a PDF, with searchable, copyable, text and a very much more readable layout, of Ralph Baric's 2024-01-22 interview with the Select Subcommittee. This also has links to some of the exhibits.
The PDF transcripts this Subcommittee produces are scans of paper printouts. The layout is terrible and there is no text layer to search or copy-paste.
I am still reading the testimony and will revise the PDF to fix typos when I have finished.
To summarize, Bruttel et al paper is 100% correct, but they wrote it to "get Shi." They (unknowingly) set a trap for Baric, who walked right into it. Their paper shows SARS2 was engineered b/c of 6 segments separated by 5 restriction sites (BsaI & BsmBI). Baric's (cDNA) system used 6 segments and 5 restriction sites. Shi used a BAC system that Baric made fun of. It also used 7+ segments and was based on the WIV1 backbone, which they recovered 25% of the time. It's Chinese junk. The process you brilliantly described was Baric's cDNA. It's next level. It can create something from nothing. He needs (Shi's) genome and can recreate samples (e.g., SHC014 RaTG13) in his UNC lab.
To answer your question, (Baric's) BsaXI restriction site forced the second CGG codon. It also forced the Proline (PRRAR), which Zoonati claimed as evidence for natural origin. Bruttel et al left out the most incriminating restriction site for whatever reason.
I have only read part of his article. He seems to be suggesting that Chinese researchers were investigating furin cleavage sites in corona viruses, including of a feline coronavirus which has a strong furin cleavage site which makes the virus relatively weak. When the genome mutates in the cat, to produce a weaker furin cleavage site, the resulting virus is very strong and kills the cat.
Apparently SARS-CoV-2 has the same furin cleavage site as that of the cat virus - in its strong or weak site --> weak or strong virus, I am not sure.
There is also discussion of antibody dependent enhancement. The author seems to be extremely knowledgeable about these matters, but he is pro-vaccine, in general, which put me off. Also, in indicates that a "chimeric" virus is not, and is not as effective as, a "live, full length, virus: "live full-length viruses rather than just pseudoviruses or chimeras". I understand that "chimeric" refers to creating a viral genome by stitching together different segments of the genomes of two or more, usually reasonably closely related, viruses. In my understanding the result is a "live" (fully functional, capable of infecting a cell and being infectious by making copies of itself) "full length" (of the genome), virus.
He also suggests that early Chinese reports about SARS-CoV-2 tended to hide or avoid mention of the furin cleavage site, implicitly because - perhaps - some of these authors had been working on adding furin cleavage sites to closely related coronavirus, maybe including the one which was, or became via some in-the lab or wild mutation, the SARS-CoV-2 which started the pandemic in Wuhan and so (as is generally assumed) the rest of the world.
We all know Yuri. But there is not 1 Chinese paper before 2020 showing interest in a furin cleavage site for 30kb bat coronavirus. I've asked him. 0. His list included University of Minnesota, the Netherlands, a chicken coronavirus in Beijing, and a protein in Shanghai. So now he's moved onto cat coronaviruses trying to fill the gap. SARS2 doesn't infect cats, and definitely doesn't transmit.
Baric's patented SARS2 "chimeric coronavirus spike protein is being administered, delivered and/or introduced into a subject, e.g., to elicit or induce an immune response,."
Most lab leakers were pro vax, so to learn SARS2 was an animal vaccine causes them to lose it. Your last point is their achilles heel, Shi and WIV brought attention to the furin cleavage on Jan 24, when they published RaTG13 (and indirectly pointed to Dani's BSL4 lab)
Self-spreading vaccines - what could possibly go wrong? Lock-up everyone involved in performing or funding the gain-of-function research before they kill all of us.
"Baric: So before, I think what you need to think about is that no one had the sequence. So if you don't have the sequence of the pathogen, you don't have any guide to how to synthesize it or make it."
Clearly this is a non-answer to the question, since if Baric made SARS-2 he would already be the source of the genome. Was the committee so dumb they couldn't pick this up? Apparently so. Why didn't they insist on a simple yes/no answer?
Since Baric avoided answering the question "Did you make a virus similar to SARS-2 before the outbreak?" it is strongly implied that he did.
Agreed, good catch, Baric is slippery. Based on his own 2018 DARPA Defuse notes, he had a genome 20% different from SARS1 and SARS2 is 20% different. But he lied about that and claimed SARS2 was 22% different.
Actually I'm being naive here. The committee just let Baric's bullshit answer slide and moved on. They've asked the important question and got an answer. Job done. If Baric hadn't created the virus he could have easily said no. The fact that he did not basically proves that he did. You are way ahead of the lab leakers on this issue.
I made a PDF, with searchable, copyable, text and a very much more readable layout, of Ralph Baric's 2024-01-22 interview with the Select Subcommittee. This also has links to some of the exhibits.
https://vitamindstopscovid.info/07-origins/#baric
The PDF transcripts this Subcommittee produces are scans of paper printouts. The layout is terrible and there is no text layer to search or copy-paste.
I am still reading the testimony and will revise the PDF to fix typos when I have finished.
Then I will read Alex Washburne's response https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/science-spills-over-into-congress to Ralph Baric's dismissal / critique of the article he and two colleagues wrote about the SARS-CoV-2 genome showing clear signs that it was assembled in the lab: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1 (Preprint, being worked on for peer-reviewed publication.)
Then I will read the anonymous review of this preprint, as linked to above: https://twitter.com/Bryce_Nickels/status/1786206196447289768
Not being a virologist, I did not understand the genetic techniques which were being discussed here. On 2024-01-30 I cobbled together an explanation for non-virologists, which I wrote as a comment to one of Alex's articles. https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/the-strength-of-evidence-for-a-lab/comment/48372178?utm_campaign=reaction&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack&utm_content=comment He liked it, so I guess it was on the right track. I would very much appreciate any suitably informed person checking what I wrote and suggesting corrections and improvements.
Then I will listen to Peter Daszak's testimony.
Brilliant copy Robin!
To summarize, Bruttel et al paper is 100% correct, but they wrote it to "get Shi." They (unknowingly) set a trap for Baric, who walked right into it. Their paper shows SARS2 was engineered b/c of 6 segments separated by 5 restriction sites (BsaI & BsmBI). Baric's (cDNA) system used 6 segments and 5 restriction sites. Shi used a BAC system that Baric made fun of. It also used 7+ segments and was based on the WIV1 backbone, which they recovered 25% of the time. It's Chinese junk. The process you brilliantly described was Baric's cDNA. It's next level. It can create something from nothing. He needs (Shi's) genome and can recreate samples (e.g., SHC014 RaTG13) in his UNC lab.
To answer your question, (Baric's) BsaXI restriction site forced the second CGG codon. It also forced the Proline (PRRAR), which Zoonati claimed as evidence for natural origin. Bruttel et al left out the most incriminating restriction site for whatever reason.
Thanks Jim. I am still reading the transcript of Ralph Baric's interview, and then will read your analysis properly and those I mentioned above.
You mentioned a 2024-04-22 essay by Yuri Deigin. He wrote another one "4 days ago" from 2024-05-13, so about May 9th:
https://yurideigin.medium.com/why-ralph-barics-testimony-strengthens-the-case-for-a-covid-19-lab-origin-81cf9c2acf71
Yuri Deigin: https://youthbiotx.com/team who has written a bunch of articles arguing for, as far as I can tell, the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=ljkJ0DMAAAAJ
I have only read part of his article. He seems to be suggesting that Chinese researchers were investigating furin cleavage sites in corona viruses, including of a feline coronavirus which has a strong furin cleavage site which makes the virus relatively weak. When the genome mutates in the cat, to produce a weaker furin cleavage site, the resulting virus is very strong and kills the cat.
Apparently SARS-CoV-2 has the same furin cleavage site as that of the cat virus - in its strong or weak site --> weak or strong virus, I am not sure.
There is also discussion of antibody dependent enhancement. The author seems to be extremely knowledgeable about these matters, but he is pro-vaccine, in general, which put me off. Also, in indicates that a "chimeric" virus is not, and is not as effective as, a "live, full length, virus: "live full-length viruses rather than just pseudoviruses or chimeras". I understand that "chimeric" refers to creating a viral genome by stitching together different segments of the genomes of two or more, usually reasonably closely related, viruses. In my understanding the result is a "live" (fully functional, capable of infecting a cell and being infectious by making copies of itself) "full length" (of the genome), virus.
He also suggests that early Chinese reports about SARS-CoV-2 tended to hide or avoid mention of the furin cleavage site, implicitly because - perhaps - some of these authors had been working on adding furin cleavage sites to closely related coronavirus, maybe including the one which was, or became via some in-the lab or wild mutation, the SARS-CoV-2 which started the pandemic in Wuhan and so (as is generally assumed) the rest of the world.
We all know Yuri. But there is not 1 Chinese paper before 2020 showing interest in a furin cleavage site for 30kb bat coronavirus. I've asked him. 0. His list included University of Minnesota, the Netherlands, a chicken coronavirus in Beijing, and a protein in Shanghai. So now he's moved onto cat coronaviruses trying to fill the gap. SARS2 doesn't infect cats, and definitely doesn't transmit.
Baric's patented SARS2 "chimeric coronavirus spike protein is being administered, delivered and/or introduced into a subject, e.g., to elicit or induce an immune response,."
https://jimhaslam.substack.com/p/sars2-was-patented-by-ralph-baric
Most lab leakers were pro vax, so to learn SARS2 was an animal vaccine causes them to lose it. Your last point is their achilles heel, Shi and WIV brought attention to the furin cleavage on Jan 24, when they published RaTG13 (and indirectly pointed to Dani's BSL4 lab)
https://jimhaslam.substack.com/p/6-if-you-believe-the-wiv-engineered
Self-spreading vaccines - what could possibly go wrong? Lock-up everyone involved in performing or funding the gain-of-function research before they kill all of us.
.
Petroleum Based Synthetic Injections
Are Not Compatible
With Water Based Human Bodies.
This Is Not Complicated People.
.